Waris Dirie

Well, I was jus googling while chatting wid Roweena on g talk. And I surprisingly remembered a Somalian Model about whom I read back then in 1998 ( I had forgotten her name though). Its been 12 years now.. After googling for 2 weeks.. Finally I came across her name, which was Waris Dirie. She is a Black Model ( No offense I meant she is from Africa)... Well I wanted to share her story with u guys... I know its gonna take a long time for me to write But I think, its worth my time.

Well, Waris Dirie was born in 1965 (approx, cuz she doesnt know)..into a nomad family living in the region of Gallcaio, in the Somali desert near the border to Ethiopia. Her family was a tribe of herdsmen in the Somalian desert. They were considered as well to do family according to Somalian standard. At the tender age of five, she underwent the inhuman procedure of genital mutilation. This horrible tradition is still practiced worldwide today, both by Muslims and Christians. Dirie remembers the mutilation only as 'that horror.' As a little girl, she was blindfolded and held down by her mother, with only a cloth to bite on to relieve her pain, while her clitoris was cut out with a dirty razor. The same procedure, Dirie says, killed her sister - along with many other girls in Somalia who were cut in the wrong vein and bled to death or died of an infection. But Waris, who survived this tragic procedure, shows a strength, not only of the physical sort, but also a strength of mind, body and soul. At the age of 13 Waris fled from a forced marriage to a man, who could have been her grandfather in age. She found out she was to have an arranged marriage to a 60-year-old man in exchange for five camels. After an adventurous escape she arrived in London. She lived with an uncle in Addis Ababa who took her with him when he was appointed ambassador to London worked there as a housemaid and at McDonald’s.

While she was working at McDonald's, she was discovered by the British top photographer Terence Donovan as a model at the age of 18 and became an international celebrity. Terence Donovan, who helped secure for her the cover of the 1987 Pirelli calendar. From there, her modeling career took off, scoring advertisements for top designers such as Chanel, Levi's, L'Oreal & Revlon. She was given a part as a James Bond girl in the movie ‘The Living Daylight’, side by side with Timothy Dalton.

In 1997, at the height of her modeling career, Waris spoke for the first time with Laura Ziv of the women's magazine Marie Claire about the female genital mutilation (FGM) that she had undergone as a child, an interview which received worldwide media coverage. That same year, Waris became a UN ambassador for the abolition of FGM, and later paid her mother a visit in her native Somalia.The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, appointed her as UN Special Ambassador for the elimination of Female Genital Mutilation. She travelled the world for the UN, participated in conferences, met with presidents, Nobel Prize winners and movie stars and collects enormous funds for the UN.

Waris Dirie is a role model for all women. She is standing up for women's rights and letting the world know about this horror that many innocent children go through each year. She is very independent to go out on her own and try to finally put an end to this abomination. Waris is determined, through campaigns and charities, to make her voice heard to help try and save these children. Regardless of what people think, Dirie is standing up for women in the countries of Djibouti, Sudan and Somalia, and her work is reported on in Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali and Nigeria. Dirie is an independent soul striving for equal rights in this world. Standing up for all she believes in, on her own, she wants to make the world better for future generations of African communities that practice this ritual.

To live through such a terrible horror, you must be strong. But to lay your career on the line for thousands and thousands of children that you don't even know, children you've never see before, shows deep compassion for others. Waris Dirie knows the agony and the suffering of genital mutilation and she does not want anyone in the world to go through what she had to endure. Waris cares enough to struggle until she knows children can sleep at night, not dreading this awful ritual.

Waris is doing her part to break the wall of silence that has surrounded this practice for so long. In a new short TVE/UNFPA film, Waris relates her own story, and gives her views on how to stop FGM (female genital mutilation). "It’s got to be kept in the newspapers, it’s got to be talked about - and that’s the way people can help and to know what’s going on. Because mostly they don’t know what’s going on. Most of the world doesn’t know it’s going on, and it happens."